1.4.3 Maintenance of system configuration information

(1) Manual maintenance of system configuration information

From the System Configuration window or Destination window, you can search for destinations that match certain conditions. There are three types of searches:

• Search using a destination name, host group name, or ID group name as the key

• Search using the host registration date as the key

• Search for duplicate hosts (hosts that have different host IDs but share a MAC address, IP address, or host name)

You can use these search functions to maintain the system configuration information, by such means as copying the hosts from the search results to the Destination window or deleting them from the system configuration information.

Note that from the System Configuration window, you can only search by date and search for duplicate hosts.

For details about how to manually maintain the system configuration information using the search functions, see 6.1 Manual maintenance of system configuration information.

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(2) Automatic maintenance of system configuration information

You can maintain the system configuration information by detecting unneeded hosts and deleting them automatically from system configuration information, host groups, and ID groups. This function is called automatic maintenance of system configuration information. This automatic maintenance involves detecting duplicate hosts that have different host IDs but the same MAC address, IP address, or host name, and automatically deleting hosts with older update times (keeping the host that was updated most recently).

This processing takes place daily at a specified time. Note that automatic maintenance does not apply to the following hosts:

• Relay systems

• Agents running on the same computer as a relay system

The information deleted when a computer is automatically deleted from the system configuration information is the same as when performing manual system configuration maintenance. For details, see 6.1.5 Deleting found hosts from system configuration information.

To enable automatic maintenance of system configuration information, you need to select the Synchronize changes to the system configuration option. The check box for this option can be found on the Related to System Configurations tab of the Setup for Distribution by Using Remote Install Manager window during setup of JP1/IT Desktop Management 2 - Manager.

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(3) Automatic maintenance of destination group

Approaches to host group maintenance include editing them in the Destination window or importing data from a file. However, in a large-scale system with thousands of hosts, it is an undue burden on the system administrator to add and delete host groups as regularly as would be needed.

JP1/IT Desktop Management 2 can automatically detect new and moved hosts by monitoring the system configuration information, and assign them to the appropriate host groups based on predefined grouping conditions (called a policy). This is called Automatic maintenance of destination group, and takes place when device information is notified from a managed computer.

The following figure shows an overview of automatic maintenance of destination group:

Figure 1‒16: Overview of automatic maintenance of destination group

Maintenance of host groups can be performed at any time, not just when the managing server receives device information from managed computers. This means that at any time you can assign batches of hosts registered in the system configuration information to host groups based on the policies you have created (apply policies to all hosts).

For details about how to apply policies to host groups, see 6.3.2 Applying policies to all host groups.

You can also create policies from a file. By importing or exporting policy files, you can back up existing policies or swap one policy for another. For details about creating a policy from a file, see 6.5 Creating a policy from a file.

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(4) Automatic ID group maintenance

As a rule, the user determines which ID groups a managed computer joins. If you prefer an approach in which computers are assigned to groups on the managing server, you can configure the system to automatically register computers based on whether they satisfy specific conditions. This is a more reliable and efficient way of registering computers in ID groups than by using the Destination window or importing files.

The process of setting conditions (policies) for ID groups and automatically registering computers based on these conditions is called Automatic ID group maintenance.

There are two types of policy available for automatic ID group maintenance:

• ID group registration associated with creation of new hosts

  This policy allows JP1/IT Desktop Management 2 to automatically detect new computers and register them in ID groups.

• ID group registration based on asset management items

  This policy allows you to set asset management items (such as the department, installation location, or additional management items of hardware asset information) as conditions, and automatically register computers in ID groups based on those conditions.

The following figure shows an overview of automatic ID group maintenance:

Figure 1‒17: Overview of automatic ID group maintenance

For details about how to use automatic ID group maintenance, see 6.4 Automatic ID group maintenance.

As with automatic maintenance of destination group, you can create a policy from a file. For details, see 6.5 Creating a policy from a file.

Before you can conduct automatic maintenance of an ID group, you must have already executed a job on that ID group.

For example, suppose there is a job that you want to execute every time a new computer is deployed. By executing the job in advance with an ID group as the destination, and creating a policy that adds new computers to that ID group, you can automatically execute the job on all new computers.

The following figure shows the flow of the job when using automatic ID maintenance:

Figure 1‒18: Job flow using automatic ID group maintenance

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